Casino News Roundup: Habanero Systems, Arkansas Casinos, Vegas Stocks

A number of the biggest brands on the Las Vegas Strip saw their stocks take a massive hit on Wednesday as second-quarter reports came out. We’ll touch on a couple of other key headlines from this week before we get to that story, though.

Habanero Systems BV Partners With Videoslots.com

Online games developer Habanero Systems BV has had a very productive month. After locking up a deal with the Italian-facing Stanleybet International Betting Limited a couple of weeks ago, they’ve now inked a deal with VideoSlots.com. The crux of the deal will see a number of their games get added to the offering on VideoSlots.com, which will now push their menu to about 3,000 different games.

Habanero Systems BV will offer its entire menu of HTML5 games to VideoSlots.com, including the popular titles like London Hunter, Fortune Dogs and The Dead Escape. VideoSlots.com has a number of partnerships like this already where they feature some of the best games (and developers) in the world and now Habanero Systems BV’s games will be showcased alongside.

Arkansas Casinos Supporters Earn Extension

While most of the country moves toward the complete legalization of gambling – sports betting and casinos – the state of Arkansas is lagging behind. They’re still trying to make a move on casinos and it’s been tough sledding. The latest news is that casino supporters, who are trying to get enough signatures to put the topic on a ballot, have been given a 30-day extension to achieve that goal.

The Driving Arkansas Forward group needs to get 84,859 signatures from registered voters for it to qualify but as of late last week, the petitions had garnered just over 70,000 signatures. The good news is that the state has recognized that there is some momentum behind this and has granted them 30 more days to get the needed signatures.

If they do get enough people behind it and if the state does ratify it by a vote later in November, the idea would be to legalize a gambling spot at Hot Springs horse track and at West Memphis dog track. Both places already offer video poker and electronic games. The proposal would also legalize casinos to be built in Pope and Jefferson counties. First things first, though, as they have to get the 15,000 additional signatures so that this can even become an issue up for debate in the November election.

Caesars Entertainment Stock Falls Sharply

Caesars Entertainment is one of the biggest brands in the casino industry but their stock took a massive hit on Wednesday. After their second-quarter earnings conference call, their shares tumbled at one point by as much as 24 percent. It was a bad day for all of the Las Vegas giants but Caesars felt the most pain. They closed the day down 14.82 percent while MGM Resorts International fell 9.12 percent. Wynn dropped 4.07 percent and Las Vegas Sands also edged down by 4.02 percent.

Although it’s unclear what prompted such a massive selloff, the company’s chief financial officer Eric Hession suggested that they expect demand to be down in the two summer months.